Several years ago, while working for the US Army out of Ft. Belvoir, our team was tasked with aiding Ft. Bragg in the creation of a geospatial database comprised of known locations where the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, or the RCW as it was named by the Army, was living. Ft. Bragg was and still is a major troop training facility, and the Army wanted to be sure that exercises did not conflict with areas where the RCW was still surviving
Fast forward to 2017, and conservation partners are celebrating the first successful breeding of the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker within the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. This story in William and Mary news by Bryan Watts notes that “two young woodpeckers were banded on the 20th of May and flew from the nest cavity during the second week of June. This event represents a milestone in an ongoing effort to establish a breeding population within the refuge. A total of 18 woodpeckers were moved into the site during the falls of 2015 and 2016 by a broad coalition including several units of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, The Center for Conservation Biology, The Nature Conservancy, and many volunteers.” [Read more…]